Stan
"Stan"---Infamous Proprietor, ally to Anri Overview Stan started out as Samael the White he was a Modron from the plane of reality known as Xenarchon, and was in the service of Baal Marduk, a Sky Gods worshiped around three or four thousand years back during the Bronze era in Summeria now known as Syria that killed his own mother and banished his father to Oblivion right when he was getting started in the God business. Stan was just an errand boy for Marduk, but then along comes this exiled prince from Mount Olympus, a real smooth talker by the name of Lucifer, who was setting up camp with a bunch of wandering yokels that he intended to turn into a mighty nation and he offered Stan what sounded like a slick deal, and he jumped at the chance to swap jobs for something that sounded a lot more cushy. Lucifer wanted to remake the entire cosmos and set himself up as the One True God who was gonna lord it over everybody else. At first it was rough shakes working for the new guy, but Stan and the other recruits liked getting on board a new and upcoming enterprise. Molock, Zephod, Rashod, Uzgad, and Stan were the big bad lieutenants to the chief hancho, Gaphur. These days they are known as Michael, Ariel, Raphael, Uriel, Gabriel and, Samael the White. However Stan taking a few breaks to hang out with Lilith, this fertility goddess whom Lucifer had his eye on ended up causing him to be demoted. To make a long story short, Lucifer and his big dreams didn't pan out the way they'd planned and after he wound up getting himself trapped the rest of them were left to have to try and figure out how they were gonna keep the whole shebang going during his absence. That was when, the Israelis, had their little parting of ways with one half going on to become Sameritans and the other half becoming Judites. That was also when Stan and Gabriel were having a little feud over which way they were to carry things, with Stan siding with the Israelis while the Judites took up with Gabriel and the rest of his party. This went on for a couple centuries until the whole shebang fell under the dominion of the Babylonians, and that's where things took a really bad turn for all of them because that was where he met the Zoroastrians and through them had an encounter with their twin gods, Ahura Mazda and Ariman. Ariman promised to fill in the gap in our lives that Lucifer had left behind. At the time they were desperate for a new leader. Gabriel had run the show for a while, but Lucifer wasn't coming back, and you can only keep the wolves from your gate for so long before the creditors start calling and demanding you pay up the rent for your corner of heaven. Into this we had this quasi-mystical encounter with a Voice that claimed to be one of those mysterious Powers that run the show from behind the scenes that you always hear tell about. Ariman took advantage of their need for a new organization, and conned them into signing up under his banner, and he promised to deliver them out of the pits of despair that they'd fallen into ever since King Hosiah took that Egyptian arrow to his throat. It sounded literally like a call to arms, and they flocked to the new guy's banner, believing they were finally onto something great and glorious. Sure enough, within a couple human generations they had their country back and even had a royal commission from the King of Persia to rebuild their old temple. It wasn't too long after that when they started to get a hint that things weren't quite so right with the new order, but by then they had their newly rebuilt Jerusalem, a new Torah and a functioning Knesset with all these noisy rabbis yammering about the scriptural meaning of this or that paragraph or phrase. It seemed like a lot of fun, all those lawyers gathered together in one place keeping each other too busy to cause anybody else real trouble, and who knew what was in store for tem in those days before the coming of Alexander. Ariman was careful to bide his time. He could adopt the mantle of seeming benevolence while working to craft the coming of Armageddon. Stan’s first big hint was when Ari held this big party and invited all of the lesser functionaries to the ball to smooch it up with one another. That was when Stan got into an argument with Gabriel about whether or not it was better to govern a people by wisdom rather than fear. Gabe was an old-fashioned 'Fire and Brimstone' sort whose idea of moral encouragement was a whip and a taser. Stan’s always been a people kind of person, he liked public relations gimmicks, fancy memos and nice stationary to give everything a cozy, family-friendly kind of look, so he took the position that people were easiest to govern if you made them think you were giving them what they wanted rather than what the gods needed. Ariman cut into their tiff and challenged them both with a 'put up or shut up' proposition. Ariman singled out a man named Job, a good enough fellow as things go, but a bit thick-headed, and as stubborn as the proverbial mule. The guy had everything, a nice spread, a happy family, a good wife, the deed to his home, a second mortgage, lots of sheep and goats to keep the wool and milk trade flowing. Ariman took it all away. He killed the kids, drove the wife mad, slaughtered the animals, had the banks foreclose, slapped Job with a severe case of the Pox, and just for laughs sent some buddies of his along to torment the poor guy and call him an ingrate. The challenge for Job was to blame his God for all of his afflictions, but the guy wouldn't play along, kept insisting that he must've done something to tick the Boss man off, only wanted to know what it was that he did that was so offensive. He kept on saying that even while his so-called 'friends' were harping on about what an awful person he was not to fess up to his sins and beg for his forgiveness. But Job did not curse his god for his afflictions, which angered Ariman by proving the resilience of human faith and devotion. While Ariman backed down, like a true politician he pretended that he didn't and instead twisted the point around to make himself look good while Stan came off looking like the bad guy. Instead of Stan’s notion that people are easier to govern when they're fat, dumb and happy, Ari declared that the blind faith that Job had displayed should be the standard for the entire nation. He then told Stan to 'give back' everything that was taken away from the poor schmuck. Since Stan wasn't given the authority to bring the dead back to the world of the living he had to go and find the guy a new wife who wouldn't be too turned off by his condition, then gave him a good salve to make his boils go away, then tossed in a fertility spell so that they'd be able to make new kids to replace the old ones, then had a neighbor sell the needed livestock to help Job rebuild the farm, which he convinced the banks to sell back to Job for a song...and before too long he was singing Yahweh's praises again, even though he lit a bunch of candles to mourn the loss of his old family, who weren't coming back anytime too soon in that particular incarnation. Ari-Yahweh found a willing scribe who could pen the story to fit his specifications, but the whole incident left a bad taste in Stan’s mouth, causing him to start questioning the way things were being managed in the new establishment and the more he checked into things the more he started to worry. Once he discovered it was Ariman he really started to sweat the big droplets, because a Lord of Chaos is as far removed from a God as a shark is from a minnow a being as ancient and malevolent as Ari-Yahweh might conceal his evil behind a mantle of sanctimony, but in the end it is by the results of his actions that you can determine his wicked intentions. Of course the real breaking point for Stan was when he got an advanced look at a copy of Revelation. Enoch was bad enough, what with him getting blamed for the "fall" of all humanity and the eternal damnation of every poor sod who never even heard the name of Yahweh. The Revelation was the big kick-off, penned a couple of generations after the fall of Jersusalem and the loss of A-man's temple to the Romans, who weren't the dumb hicks people take them for these days. They knew damned well that the Jerusalem cult spelled real trouble for the Empire. It was with the nascent cult of the Christians that A-man started to score some real points, only the problem he faced with declaring himself the Universal God of all Creation was the obvious one of the world being in a real mess, and what kind of perfect deity makes a planet that has 365 and a quarter days in a year. Obviously there was a fly in the ointment, and that's where Stan came in, the original fall guy, getting blamed for making a mess out of that old mud-ball of a planet. When Stan read this he got scared, because, aside from him being the guy who's supposed to be out to conquer the world by fostering a kid on a mortal who'd be a kind of Anti-Anri. There was the little matter of him losing in the end, and getting cast down into oblivion for all eternity, ultimate dissolution. Stan knew right away that the book served two ends, as a propaganda piece to rally the troops and assure the faithful that they would one day win out against the Romans, and two being a set of guidelines that A-man wanted to bring into the world, which meant posing himself as the Hero-type who would ride to humanity's rescue after a really horrendous set of events that would wipe out most of the human race and leave only a fraction of the survivors to be governed by a benevolent tyranny set up to be ruled by A-man's designated puppet king. This met the end of everything, the destruction of the world, the dissolution of all matter. And of course, in order to do that, he had to knock off the competition by getting people to believe in him while cutting off belief to other gods, thereby achieving a monopoly over all of existence. Unfortunately Stan was just one guy among many close aides working for the staff under Michael, and both of them started to get qualms about the way that Gabriel was behaving. Before Stan knew it his inquiries got him called onto the carpet and dragged before the throne where the Big Boss himself was awaiting. A-man wasn't too keen about the direction Stan’s research was taking him, so he decided for laughs to have him demoted and put in charge of Abadon. Stan was the warden for a bunch of guys whose only real crime was ticking the A-man off in one way or another. Back then it wasn't all that big and it filled up pretty soon after Stan took over, which forced them to seek new quarters elsewhere on a plane of reality where the Devils reign, a place governed by the aptly-named Hell Lords, of which Stan was only a temporary charter member. Stan was as much a prisoner as those he was guarding Ariman never really trusted him enough to let him out of his sight, and he made Stan very much aware just what he could do to him if he ever did betray him. That changed upon Yesus’death at Masada. He fell into a spiritual trap set by Ari-Yahweh and was seized upon by loyal Modrons, who bore him away to the Pit of Abadon and placed him in the custody of Samael with instructions to bury him in the deepest, darkest, foulest chamber beneath Golgatha. Right away Stan knew it was a crock and a sham, Ari was locking away his greatest enemy, but Stan knew almost at once that Anri was his ticket out of that Hell hole. Of course it took some convincing before he decided to play along and help stage a jail break, but once he knew it would be his only real chance out of that hell pit he took it and no further questions asked. He and Anri freed thousands of souls trapped in limbo on that day, and much enflamed the rage of Ari-Yahweh, who suffered a loss of the energies that he had been drawing from our misery, which left him momentarily unable to come after them as they fled to a different dimension. Of course Anri no longer had a physical body, but he was freed of the constraints that held him in check from utilizing his full powers, so he chose to travel to a world near to the center of the Light to regroup and regather his senses so that he might return once again in his subsequent ninth incarnation. Stan in turn chose to flee to Deva, which is neutral territory and well outside of Azri-Yahweh's evil grasp. However a parting gift the A-man slapped him with was a curse that changed him into one of the Ghourdanians who ruled there. Though even Stan himself doesn’t know if it was that or he changed himself into a Ghourdanian, but Ari's curse prevented him from changing back. Either way he made Deva his new home and settled in for the duration. Stan set up Frank’s bachelor party with the help of Eve and Morgan. Not only did he run the bar but he set up a Sanctuary Spell over the establishment so that even long time enemies were rubbing shoulder to shoulder without body parts flying in all directions. He was forced to step in when Alexander Anderson followed Alucard and Integra to Japan so he could kill their child before it was born. This ended up pissing off Death who wanted the day off, but since Alexander’s soul was partially artificial he wasn’t technically dead complicating matters on where he was supposed to go. Luckily Alucard sent Alexander’s body off somewhere. When Thelendra and Kasumi arrived Stan greeted his friends’ daughter while Kasumi stared at the disconcerting figure before her as if wondering to trust him on the basis of his appearance. Thelendra explained the origin of Stan. When Kasumi stilled looked uncertain Frank just told her to go with it as what you think you know often turns out to be something different. Morgan quickly arrived to get everything back on track so Stan placed a spell that separated everyone by gender. Notes Satan, is a title that means 'Adversary' among the Hebrews. Category:Deva